


Courage of a Different Sort

by Clocketpatch



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 16:57:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clocketpatch/pseuds/Clocketpatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Howard met Jackie; and what came after. Written for the Who_like_giants ficathon on lj.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Courage of a Different Sort

**Author's Note:**

> This didn't want to be written to deadline - then it suddenly exploded.
> 
> * * *

  
It all started because I'd needed a haircut.

It had been going on eight months since I'd had my last trim and the shaggy over-growth was becoming noticeable. It wasn't my fault, per se, I'm just nervous about who I let near my neck and ears with a pair of shears. I'd been visiting the same barbers for near on fifteen years when the place suddenly closed shop a few days before Easter — some kind of tax scandal.

Probably I should've sorted some new arrangement already, but instead I'd procrastinated. Months and other holidays had come and gone; then, suddenly it was a new year and my co-workers at the office were taking the Mickey out of me for it almost constantly. They weren't mean about it, but I had enough to deal with without the constant cracks. That, and the boss had just sent out a memo about maintaining our professional appearances which had a pretty straight forward message hidden in it.

I resolved to take care of the problem once and for all over lunch.

The security firm I worked for was located in the bottom tier of a block of flats. There were other shops and small businesses in the block. There was a hairdresser at the end. I'd been meaning to slip in there for weeks now, but the 'Cheap Cuts!' sign in the window gave me an involuntary shudder every time I saw it.

It's a stupid thing to be nervous about, I know, but I got nicked on the ear as a child and since then I've been edgy around people with scissors. I'm not a big man, but I'm tall enough to hold my own and really I should've got over it already. It's not like I got queasy at the thought of blood.

The door tingled as I ducked in. A few moments later and I was sitting in a plush chair in front of a mirror, all decked out with a black bib secured loosely around my neck. It felt like I was being choked. The combs and scissors resting in their jars of blue-green sterilizing solution made me think of some kind of mad scientist lab. I took a long, deep breath. This was ridiculous. I was a grown man, for pity's sake.

The hairdresser spritzed me and a bit of the cold water trickled down the back of my neck. I involuntarily stiffened.

The hairdresser must've noticed because she started cooing at me, telling me that it was all okay. I read her backwards tag in the mirror —

Jackie Tyler.

"What would you like done, hun?" she asked.

I swallowed. My old barber had just _done_ it without any questions. Which led to the fact that I didn't actually _know_ what I wanted done.

"Just shorter, please," I murmured.

Half an hour later, I escaped back to the office with my ears intact and a new hair cut. It was short, just as I'd asked. The chill January air nipped at my bare neck. It felt good.

*

Three years later, I went in for a trim. The door tinkled as I entered, same old familiar bells. I didn't see my regular hairdresser and everyone else was with a customer, so I sat down to idly flip through magazines and mull over my day at work.

I had a bit of a boring life all told, and I was fine with that. I still am fine with that. Some people might say I'm an unambitious coward, but then, those some people probably didn't have to carefully schedule their days around pre-planned meals and blood sugar tests.

A few minutes later, Jackie Tyler emerged from the back of the shop. I started to stand up, to make my way to the hot seat. Then I paused. Jackie's eyes were red and her peroxide hair was mussed. One of the other hair-dressers left her post to go comfort her co-worker.

I hesitated. I didn't really know this woman; she was just the person I paid to cut my hair once every two months. But she had a nice manner and a way of just rattling on about her life and making it all seem so exciting. She was probably ten years my junior and seeing her crying made strange almost fatherly feelings rise up. I wanted to go over and help her, to hold her and tell her that the world wasn't cruel.

Instead I just stood dumbly for a moment before taking my wait seat again.

I was called up in a minute. Jackie tied the bib a bit too tight. She stood behind me, and I could see her biting her lip in the mirror. Normally I'd be a bit afraid of her snipping my ear off or something equally irrational. Instead, for the first time, I initiated conversation:

"… is everything okay?"

Jackie sniffed loudly. She started fluffing at my hair, sending tingles down my neck.

"Yes, everything is fine," she snapped. "How would you like it?"

I swallowed. I could smell cut hair and chemical sprays and disinfectant and shampoo.

"It's just that… you were crying?"

Her eyes were red in the mirror. She turned away when she noticed how I was looking at her, her fingers dropping from my hair to fiddle with the tools on her counter.

"If you…" I steeled my courage, not entirely sure what I was offering or if she would accept. "If… if you need to talk about it…?"

"It's my daughter," Jackie said, eventually. And then it all came pouring out:

She'd dropped out of school and run off with a no good punk three years her elder. They were going to start a band and get famous, apparently. Jackie was frantic that her baby was going to end up trapped in an abusive relationship, addicted to drugs, or worse —

It wasn't a world I knew anything about. I had my simple nine to five life and was content with it. I'd gone straight from college to work doing security assessments with no extra-curricular detours. I'd wanted to, sometimes, but in my case the consequences of drugs and drinking were magnified out of proportion with any reward. And I'd never really seen the appeal of being the only sober one at a party; not that I'd been invited to many of those, back in the day.

"I'm sorry," said Jackie, cutting off mid-sentence. "You don't really want to hear all of this."

"I don't mind," I said.

"You're a complete stranger," said Jackie. "I don't even know your name."

Which made sense, all in all. She only saw me once every two months to clip my hair and that was the extent of our interactions. Still, it hurt.

"It doesn't mean I don't care."

*

Friendship wasn't something that came easily to me. I'd learned to keep my nose down early on. Luckily, Jackie was gregarious enough for both of us. It didn't go much beyond the odd shared movie or walk through the park. Eventually, Jackie asked me home to dinner.

I tried to excuse himself, claiming food allergies. It's that same foolishness again, but there are things about myself I don't like admitting if I don't have to. People look at you differently, even if they say they won't.

Jackie laughed at my excuses and told me that I could cook if I wanted to —

"I'm not so bad at the five recipes I'm good at, but if you need anything fancy you'd be better making it yourself. Rose, she'd say…" And then she trailed of.

I put my hand on her shoulder but didn't move further than that. Romance wasn't something that came easily to me, and Jackie was younger and more beautiful than me. Besides, she already had a gaggle of boyfriends and exes. I was content to be 'just a friend', a shoulder to cry on.

I didn't take the invite to dinner.

Two weeks later, Rose came home, broken-hearted but safe. I'd never seen Jackie so happy.

*

Another three years and Rose had done it again. This time she'd up and left with no warning after lying about going to her friend Shareen's for the night. Jackie was frantic and I'd tried my best to calm her down; but what could I do?

Last anyone had seen, Jackie's daughter had been with her new boyfriend, a certain Mickey Smith. I'd had met him once or twice in passing and he seemed a decent bloke. Still, you never could tell these days.

I used the printer and copier at work to help Jackie make up posters. I helped her plaster the city with them. I let her lean on my shoulder and cry, not sure what else to do, or what to say.

If I could ever find that ungrateful daughter of hers, I'd give her a right sit down. If she could only see the way she made her mother cry, and with all the hard work Jackie went through. A single mother on a hairdresser salary - and that wasn't easy work either, on your feet all the day, dealing with old curmudgeons like me.

Time passed. I knew enough from the claims laid at my office and the police dramas I watched in the evenings to know that the ideal window had long since passed. Still, I continued to print and copy the posters for Jackie, even when the boss yelled at me for wasting ink. Stupid, smarmy business school graduate. He was almost twenty years younger than me and hadn't been with the office half so long, yet he thought he knew what was _best_. I told him to deduct the charges from my pay cheque and kept on printing.

Rumpled missing posters blew up and down the alleys of the council, gathering in limp, forgotten piles with the rest of the trash.

That year was awful. Jackie was a wreck the whole time, but she never gave up. I couldn't keep up with her. I couldn't offer her anything other than paper and ink. It wasn't enough.

Then, out of the blue, Rose turned up again. She had a man with her who looked nearly as old as me. He was some skin-head bloke who called himself a doctor but was clearly no such thing, unless it was some arts school degree. Probably it was his gang code name. He dressed all tough in leather and posed like he had some grudge on the world.

I wanted to punch him for all that he'd put Jackie through, but then there was that alien hoax and he swanned off just as quick as he'd come, taking Rose in tow with him.

Jackie was heart-broken again, but at least now she knew her daughter was alive. More time passed, more movies and hair cuts. More walks in the park. I invited her over to dinner at my place and she came.

It was the first meal of many. I hadn't really eaten with someone else on a regular basis since — I couldn't even remember it. It was strange and wonderful, and Jackie was so funny. Sometimes she'd get so sad though. She'd mention her daughter off travelling and look distantly out the window or wave vaguely at the ceiling. As if her daughter were up in heaven smiling down on us, instead of off eloped and doing god knew what, and who knew where.

I didn't tell her how much I hated her daughter for doing that to her, or worse, her daughter's good-for-nothing boyfriends.

Then one day she showed up at my stoop drunk and sobbing. I bundled her inside, trying to get a coherent story out of her. We sat in the kitchen, the electric kettle steaming between us.

Rose had returned, apparently, and then had left again to get her 'doctor' out of some kind of dangerous situation, and now, again, Jackie didn't know whether her daughter was alive or dead. I felt a surge of anger.

"Damn him!" I shouted, pounding my fist on the table.

"I won't hear you saying anything bad about him," Jackie said quietly. "He sent her back."

"And then she ran back. Jesus, Jackie, I don't know why you put up with it. He's old enough to be her father."

"Do you think I have a choice?" she shouted back at me suddenly.

"No… I…"

"Are you calling me a bad mother? Is that what this is about Howard? You think that I'm a bad parent, well, you're a fine one to judge."

"That's not what I meant, I… I…" Fuck. I didn't know what to say. "You're drunk," I managed.

"She's my little girl," said Jackie, her voice falling into an exhausted murmur. "And she's out there now, fighting for what she believes, because I raised her to do the right thing. Sometimes, I wish I'd taught her to be a bit more scared of the world."

Thinking back over my life, I reached my hand across the kitchen table to loop my fingers over hers. Jackie's eyes were bright and red. It seemed like she'd always been crying the whole time I'd known her. She deserved so much better in her life.

"It's better to be brave," I told her. "Sometimes, I wish…"

I stopped, not sure what I wished, but our eyes met and I think she knew.

I made her stay with me that night. I lay awake on the couch listening to her sobbing in my bed. If I were braver I'd have gone in and comforted her.

*

Rose showed up that Christmas, out of the blue as always. She had a new boyfriend in tow. The two of them hung around Jackie's flat for weeks, taking advantage of her I thought. The new boyfriend was younger than the last. He went by Doctor as well, cementing my theory that it was some kind of code name.

He stole my clothes. That annoyed me. I didn't say anything, but I was irked at Jackie. We'd been having something steady for almost a full year and then it was all hijacked by her prodigal daughter and her latest boy toy.

Still, they did leave eventually. Jackie was sad about it, but she also told me that she was a bit relieved. Apparently Rose's new boyfriend, while cuter and more charming than the last one, was also a right rude and annoying git. He'd broken half her electronics fiddling with them. I did as best a patch job as I could, but when that didn't work I donated my own toaster and radio. After all, I was practically living there now.

Then she caught me.

I'll never forget the look on her face. The absolute hysterical Jackie horror.

"What are you doing?"

"I…" The needle was in my arm. I pressed the plunger and withdrew it. My hands were shaking so bad. I felt guilty; why did I feel guilty?

"I should've known it was too good to be true! And the midnight munchies, I should've known. I'm dating a bloody drug addict."

"No, I… I…" The disposable syringe clattered to the floor. "I.. I…"

"Get out of my house."

"I… I…" I wished I'd been raised to be braver, that I hadn't been taught from such a young age to hide, not that I could blame my up-bringing for what I'd become. A fifty-four year old man stuttering in his bathrobe. I was pathetic. "It's not what you think."

Jackie crossed her arms. She was so beautiful in her pink, fluffy robe. My thoughts strayed momentarily. No. that wasn't — I took a deep breath, and for the first time in thirty years I told someone who wasn't a doctor or an insurance agent about my condition.

I didn't flinch when she called me a poor dear and held me close. She didn't treat me any different after that. I should've known better the whole time. She was made of stern stuff Jackie Tyler was, and there was a heart of gold underneath it.

I think that, maybe, I loved her.

*

A year and a bit later, I stood in front of the Canary Wharf monument, just a sad, lonely old man. I traced their names in the cold granite. My hair was getting long again. I didn't care.

I saw him out of the corner of my eye, Rose's boyfriend. The pretty boy one. He was standing in the shadows, just staring at the monument. For the first time, I felt pity for him. What I'd had with Jackie, what he'd obviously had with her daughter. We were just sad old fools the pair of us. I thought about going over to him, to say —

Something? What?

But I wasn't brave enough, I'd never been, so instead I had to content myself with might-have-beens.

Bundling my coat against the cold, I set off for home.

 

_fin_

* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=36198>


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